


Sitting in the Corner, Playing With Myself

by pamdizzle



Series: Welcome to Midam Hell... [1]
Category: Supernatural
Genre: Biblical References, Forgiveness, Friendship, Grace - Freeform, Lucifer's Cage (Supernatural), M/M, Off-screen Relationship(s), POV Michael, Post-Season/Series 05 Finale, Pre-Slash, Souls, The agreement, Touch-Starved, Very Mild Gore, sam is a good person, very mild torture
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-10-19
Updated: 2020-10-19
Packaged: 2021-03-08 23:07:52
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,591
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27094777
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/pamdizzle/pseuds/pamdizzle
Summary: Funny title, angsty af Michael POV of how his and Adam's agreement came about. Happy ending, for all that they're still stuck in hell by the end of this fic.Excerpt:“You forgot about me,” Adam accuses.Michael steels himself. He will not lie. “Yes.”At this, those blank eyes flicker into something far more damning. Adam’s pain is palpable, the blunt edges of Michael’s truth cutting them both.“You angels,” Adam says, his voice a broken, brittle thing, “you don’t care about anyone but yourselves and I…I hate you. I hate all of you.”
Relationships: Michael/Adam Milligan
Series: Welcome to Midam Hell... [1]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1977553
Comments: 13
Kudos: 111





	Sitting in the Corner, Playing With Myself

**Author's Note:**

> Meant to accompany the fic I wrote earlier this week, but can certainly be read separately. I just wanted to examine a little slice of hell.

Once the ground reaches up to swallow them both, Michael feels a brief stab of annoyance for the Winchesters and little else. It passes almost immediately. What does it matter if their fight is on the earth or in hell? Once Michael is victorious, their Father will return, and Earth will be transformed into paradise as was promised. 

Of course, Michael realizes his error the moment the cage slams shut behind them, as the forces of hell rage on around them. Tendrils of dark, wicked things lick between the bars of the cage, stinging against his grace with every sickly caress. He is still catching his bearings—the absence of light a physical loss—when Lucifer pushes him up against the bars. His laugh is taunting, manic.

“Poor, poor Mikey,” Lucifer tuts. “You never were much one for ad lib, huh? There’s no line in Revelation about Saint Michael falling into hell. Kind of makes you wonder, doesn’t it?”

“It doesn’t matter where we have this contest,” Michael argues, leveraging his grace to throw Lucifer to the opposite end of the cage. “Your end is inevitable, brother.”

“You think so? Really?” Lucifer gestures to the burning plague around them. “Allow me to welcome you hell, brother. I’m sure you’ll feel right at home in an eon or two, because I promise you, that’s exactly what this is. You’re never getting out, Michael, because Dad is never coming back. Never, ever, ever, ever, ever, ever—”

Michael cuts him off with a fist to Sam Winchester’s jaw.

“Ow!” Lucifer rubs his cheek, grudging. “I am so gonna kick your ass for that!”

Michael scoffs, Lucifer charges.

Finally, they come to blows, truly. Michael throws himself to it, because it is his duty, but also because he is angry. Lucifer feels nothing of remorse for tearing their family apart. He cannot even apologize, still focused on justifying his betrayal and arguing his position rather than seeking any path to redemption. He still believes his own will supersedes the purpose their Father assigned them. Their father who willed them into existence and entrusted them with the safety of his other creations. All this time, and Lucifer still believes he did nothing wrong.

He has learned nothing.

He will never change.

Michael’s fury carries him through their battle for an age until, finally, he sees an opening and takes it. Lucifer counters, and their blows strike with such force that they are both tossed to opposite ends of the cage once more, where they fall, slumped in exhaustion. It is only in this moment that Michael sees the futility of their endeavor. The cage was built specifically to clip archangel wings, and neither of them can call upon the full power of their grace. They are too evenly matched in this.

He stares at Lucifer and his brother stares back.

“Well, that was fun,” Lucifer finally says. “Can we please go back to ignoring each other now? I don’t know about you, but my vessel is just dying to reap the seeds he’s sown with his betrayal up top.”

Michael snorts. “Your offense to being betrayed is truly fascinating, considering betrayal was your invention. Are you not proud of your influence upon humanity?”

“As I recall, I wasn’t the only one on the hill looking down my nose at Daddy’s hairless apes back in the day,” he says. “Hell, look at you all now, rolling your eyes at the mundanity of it all. Why else would you go out of your way to jumpstart the apocalypse? You’re not half as righteous as you think you are—you’re just bored!”

“Shut up!”

Lucifer snorts. “You hate your job! Admit it! It’s not like He’s listening. Go ahead, Michael, for the first time in your entire existence dare to…DARE.”

“Enough!” Michael shouts.

“You’re right,” his brother agrees, flippant. “This is boring. I think we should take advantage of the few instruments we have at hand and do our best to have a good time, don’t you?”

Before Michael can unpack the many asinine qualities of that statement, Lucifer summons Sam’s soul out into the cage between them. To his credit, the younger Winchester takes one look at the both of them, and puts as much distance between them as their confined quarters will allow.

He looks directly at Michael and, hesitantly, ponders, “A-Adam?”

Minutely, Michael shakes his head. A small, singular motion that has Sam trembling with fear as his eyes slide warily toward Lucifer. Michael follows his gaze, alarmed at the sheer joy Lucifer wields like a weapon. He is wearing a different visage now; one Michael recognizes from Zachariah’s report. Nicolas Vaught.

Confused, Michael starts, “Wha—”

Sam’s piercing screams fill the void around them, his soul flayed open before them as if flesh from his body. Horrified, Michael immediately repairs him, before rounding on his brother.

“What is the meaning of this?” He demands.

“Oh, come on!” Lucifer fairly howls. “That was child’s play compared to Dad’s Old Testament days!”

“Father never tortured their souls,” Michael chastens. “He never derived any joy from their suffering.”

“I’m sure the humans massacred in His name would beg to differ,” Lucifer taunts. “I’m sure your meat suit is so much happier wherever you’ve shoved him. Sammy, you studied the penal system. How long would you say it takes a human mind to break in solitary confinement?”

Michael flinches as if slapped, and Lucifer doesn’t miss a beat. He snaps his fingers to seal Sam’s lips shut. “Never mind, I already know. Human minds are notoriously weak, brother. Crack like a walnut under the barest of strain. You wanna know the answer?” His brother waves a hand, cutting off any retort Michael might have posited. “Don’t worry, I’ll tell you—fifteen days. They’re social creatures, humans. Can’t stand the quiet, most of them, but I’m sure…oh, what’s his name, again?”

Lucifer snaps his fingers again and Sam’s mouth opens. “Adam. Michael, Adam. He…he’s okay, right? He’s innoc—” Sam’s lips seal again, unnatural skin growing over them as if they were never there at all, and he squirms with frustration. Michael admires his spirit, despite how his gut churns at his mutilated features.

“Adam!” Lucifer crows. “Poor, lonely, Adam. How long would you say we’ve been down here, Michael? A day? A week? A month? Maybe an entire Earth year! Of course, time moves differently for humans in hell. Our…however long may as well be an eternity for all little Adam knows.”

Michael curls the hands of his vessel into fists. “He’s safe.”

“Is he?” Lucifer chuckles. “What do you really know about hell, Michael?”

To this, he has no reply. He assumes Adam is safe, his soul held away and protected from their fight and Michael’s grace. The question of time, however, is concerning. Angels are not meant to assume vessels for long periods of time. The service of the soul within is respected, and it is always the goal to return them to their lives uninterrupted and unharmed. Should harm befall their charge, the soul ascends to heaven but Adam…isn’t dead. He didn’t forget him, he…

He hasn’t thought of him, Michael realizes. He has not spared the human life of his vessel a single thought since falling into hell.

“At least Sam knows I’m always thinking about him,” Lucifer continues, as if plucking the chord straight from Michael’s heart. He strokes a hand along Sam’s sallow face. “I’d never, ever forget him.” He taps the tips of his fingers tauntingly against Sam’s cheek as he says, “He’s just.” Tap. “That.” Tap. “Special.” 

Lucifer barks in laughter, eyes closed in revelry. It is in this moment that Michael hears it, a prayer from Sam: “Please, Michael.” He isn’t praying for himself, and it is here that understanding passes between them.

Creating the illusion is second nature. Lucifer will see Michael, distraught, head in his hands and defeated, and he will continue his mind games with Sam and Michael’s facade. Secure in his deception, Michael turns his focus inward.

\--

The soul he finds is not as he left it. It has…contracted upon itself, curled and distorted into something almost unrecognizable. Not that Michael was all that familiar with it before he tucked it away. Still, if he didn’t know any better, he would think it well on its way to demonic. Could hell have…

Has his grace been compromised?

Distressed, he reaches for Adam slowly, but the soul’s despondence is such that it barely glimmers in light of his presence. “Adam,” he calls. “Come forth.”

Adam’s consciousness does not emerge, and Michael beckons again with more urgency, more command. Yet, nothing. Nothing, nothing, nothing and he grows ever more concerned. How long has it been for this innocent human soul? How long has Michael left him to this ruinous fate?

One more failure to add to the list. One more reason for their Father to continue forsaking them with his absence. One more—

No.

Michael will bring him forth. He can rectify this, though his means is strictly forbidden. Or, it was, before. When angels still walked beside man. He hopes, for once, that Lucifer is right and their Father continues to ignore them, at least for a little while longer. Long enough that Michael can repair the damage he has done.

Carefully, Michael removes the remaining barriers between Adam’s soul and his own grace. Hesitantly, with the barest of contact, he touches the writhing, twisted essence of Adam Milligan. In an instant, he is swept out, and then in, in, in, in until, finally, everything stills. Adam's soul surrounds him, enveloping him in warmth, so very different to the overall cold of hell.

He shakes the feeling away, focused on getting to Adam. It is disconcerting to be so close to another. He doesn’t wish to linger.

“Adam,” he calls again now. “Come forth.”

Something dark twists in the ether of Adam’s soul and, finally, the boy manifests. His eyes are bloodshot, face gaunt, expression haunted. There are bald patches along his scalp, picked clean by distraught, desperate fingers. For long moments, Adam appears to look through Michael, dazed, before finally he says, voice flat and void of substance, “You left me here.”

Shame, thick like bile, creeps up and sticks in his throat. “It was meant to keep you safe,” he replies, defending himself despite having no defense. It is rote within him. Second nature. He is not accustomed to being wrong. To feeling such…guilt.

“You forgot about me,” Adam accuses.

Michael steels himself. He will not lie. “Yes.”

At this, those blank eyes flicker into something far more damning. Adam’s pain is palpable, the blunt edges of Michael’s truth cutting them both.

“You angels,” Adam says, his voice a broken, brittle thing, “you don’t care about anyone but yourselves and I…I hate you. I hate all of you.”

He says it so plainly, and so quietly. Michael is gutted by it all the same. He does not know how to fix this. “Do you want me to leave?”

“You’d like that wouldn’t you?”

“No, I—”

“And the fucked up thing is,” Adam talks over him, becoming more incensed with every sharpened syllable he utters, “I would tell you to fuck off, but we both know how that ends for me, don’t we? How long has it even been—You know what, don’t answer that. I don’t want to know.”

“It has never been my intention to hurt you.” He tries to explain, “Time passes differently for angels, we—”

“Fuck your excuses, Michael!” Adam shouts. “You’re older than the universe! How can you stand there and tell me you didn’t know? No—you didn’t care! You sit up there in your ivory fucking wonderland, you and your whole fucked up family, and all you see is the great burden your father left in your care. What a fucking joke!

“You didn’t care. Your brothers in heaven don’t care! God doesn’t care! No one cares about us. No one—” Adam gasps, his throat swallowing futilely around a choking sob. “No one cares about me.”

His words strike Michael’s heart with their unforgiving veracity. There is nothing he can say, no defense he can offer. Did they not just brush aside humanity in their own desperate attempt to urge their Father’s return, after all? His pride, Michael discovers, sits at odds with his purpose here. It tells him that this—This—is why such things are forbidden, that he should sever this connection and be done with it. Another casualty of war, a logical conclusion to a necessary maneuver on the behalf of heaven.

Michael ignores it. The line is well and truly crossed. He looks at the state of the soul before him and he knows with a clarity that in this one thing, he and his brother are fundamentally different.

“You’re right,” he admits. “I spared no thought for how you might suffer here. I did not consider how my failure might impact you. I did not even consider failure as an option. In my singular pursuit of my Father’s acceptance, His return, I…abandoned my duty. I was reckless, and I regret it.”

“You have regrets?” Adam asks, his tone dripping with disdain. “Oh, well then—”

“I cannot change what happened,” Michael interjects, determined, “I can only promise—”

“Oh, goody!” Adam rolls his eyes. “You’re going to promise to do better, is that right? Well, I’m sorry, but I am the proud recipient of more empty promises than I can count, and recent history suggests that promises from angels amount to precisely fuck-all.”

A staggering swell of anger sweeps into him as sudden as a tsunami. Has he not spoken sincerely? Did he not come here with honorable intentions? Why is nothing he says, nothing he does, ever enough? Adam is backing away from him, and that too is a familiar failure, isn’t it? Michael was never affable like his brothers, he is formidable. Imposing. His brothers and sisters respect him, but they do not seek his company. Gabriel used to say that he lacks personality.

Distantly, he realizes his anger is disproportionate to the situation, its focus misguided, but he is at a loss to control it. It spews forth from the depths of his grace and he seethes. “Do you think I came here because I had to? Because I need you? I forgot about you, that is true, but you forget yourself when you speak to me. It was my hands that God commanded to forge your stars, your galaxies and space and time. I have been here from the start, and I will remain here long after your light has extinguished!”

“Extinguish it then!” Adam growls, an animal in a cage with nothing left to lose. “Put me out of my fucking misery!”

Michael watches himself raise his hand; he feels the burn of his grace aching for release. He desires this…he wants someone, anyone to understand the vast well of his suffering. He wants to show this vile, insolent, inferior speck of human infirm that its place is in the dirt with the other—

Michael falls to his knees.

“No.” He shakes with cold and fear. “God, no. Please…no.”

This thing inside him has always been there. When God made Lucifer bear the mark. When Lucifer deceived Eve in the Garden. When Gabriel left. When Metatron stopped writing and Joshua no longer spoke. When hell opened up, and they fell, and fell, and fell. And now, here, it finally breaks loose, and he screams.

And screams.

And screams.

And he cannot stop.

“Michael?”

That is his name. The name God used to call him into existence. He remembers it, of course he does. One moment, there was no Michael, and the next: He was. Now, Adam calls his name, and Michael comes forth.

There is something warm and quivering wrapped around him, a gentle voice guiding him away from despair. “I’m sorry,” it says. “Don’t hurt yourself, Michael. I don’t want—I don’t want that.”

“Adam?”

Those arms, wrapped around him like a vice, tighten even further. It would make him uncomfortable, normally, wouldn’t it? He took it for granted, before; his brothers’ easy affection. And now, he finds he has missed it and not realized it at all.

“You’re scared too, aren’t you?” Adam whispers. “You’re alone too.”

His shock is such that Michael cannot answer immediately. He doesn’t know how long they stay like that. He, archangel of the Lord, among one of God’s most powerful creations, swaddled in the arms of a human soul. Tested, and found wanting.

His hands are still aglow with holy fire, pressed and burning against his own chest. Slowly, Michael calls it back into himself. He slumps further into Adam’s reassuring presence.

“I don’t want to be like him,” he whispers, confessing the seed of his deepest fear. “Hell has warped what was left of my brother. It will change me. Such is its power.”

Adam clears his throat, an awkward air to his words when he says, “I, uh, saw some…stuff when I touched you.” He says, “You feel everything so deeply. I didn’t think angels could feel at all.”

“Most choose to ignore their feelings.” Michael fights the impulse to curl away, exposed. “It can be dangerous, for angels. Feelings are the door to doubt and selfish whim. Mine have certainly led me astray.” 

“I know what it’s like to miss your parents. I was willing to do anything to see my mom again,” Adam says, voice low and solemn. “Maybe you angels are more human than you like to think.”

Michael huffs, chagrined. “Maybe.”

“Are you going to leave again?”

“No,” He vows. A trickle of guilt trickles down his spine at that, a breath of shame that doesn’t belong to him.

Then, Adam says, “I don’t hate you. I shouldn’t have said that.”

Michael shakes his head. “You have every right to your anger.”

“Still.” Adam hums. “You came back for me. You were trying to apologize.”

“I should have come sooner.” Michael frowns, thinking back to his own anguish. “Though my company might disappoint you.”

“Your brothers are assholes, for the record,” Adam interjects. “You did your best for them. They were ungrateful.”

“It was my duty,” he replies. It is his mantra, after all. “Gratitude was never a requirement.”

“Well, I’m grateful you finally came back. Better late than never, right?" He pauses, sucking in a breath before he says, "I guess, what I’m trying to say is…I forgive you,” Adam says. “You didn’t trap us here on purpose, and you didn’t know I would be affected. I can’t really keep holding it against you, not if we’re gonna be stuck together for the rest of eternity.”

“Just like that?” Michael warily questions. In his experience, true absolution is a novelty, if not a myth.

“You’re not the only one feeling the burn, you know,” Adam tells him. “Just, don’t push me aside like that again, okay? I don’t want to lose myself either. I think we can help each other.”

“Yes,” he agrees. “Although, we can’t maintain this much longer.”

“Maintain what?”

“We are…entwined.”

“Not one for cuddling?” Adam makes as if to pull away.

Michael grasps at his retreating arms before he can stop himself. “No. Yes. I…It isn’t that.”

“O…kay.”

“I had to remove the psychic barriers between our minds to find you,” he explains. “You have retreated so far into yourself, that you have not yet noticed, but you will. I will know your every thought, experience your feelings as they occur, almost as if they are my own.”

“Look, if I have to choose to suffer a little indignity or be alone,” Adam opines, “then to hell with my dignity. I can’t do that again, Michael.”

“I understand.” Michael has a solution, though it is highly unorthodox. “We can exist together, less intimately, without separating entirely. Lucifer has done _something_ like it with Sam.”

“Um…” Adam hesitates. “Is it…bad?”

“It’s forbidden. Or, it was once,” he concedes. Then, he adds, “Now, it is mostly just forgotten.”

“How do we…I mean, how does it work?”

Loathe as he is to do it, Michael pulls himself together, leaning away from Adam’s warmth. He doesn’t fight to keep Michael in place, though he can feel the human's reluctance to let him go. Michael finds himself endeared by it, blindsided by the knowledge that, for the first time in a very long time, he is wanted.

He stands and turns to offer his hand and pull Adam up alongside him. When they’re both on their feet, he gestures to the white space around them, blank and sterile. “In the simplest terms, we are coexisting within your body, as it is in the cage, in an adjacent plane of existence.”

Adam blinks, examining his hands. “That explains why there’s two of us, I guess.”

“I could assume a different form, if you’d like. I once possessed your father—”

“Nope, no,” Adam interjects, eyes wide, “let’s not do that. This is good. This is great. Let’s, uh, let’s just keep being…us, I guess.”

“Human souls and grace are unstable when combined,” he says. “We can share space for a time, without barrier, but not for long. If we remain like this, our beings will seek to create something new. We will no longer be fully distinguishable as separate entities. At which point, separation could be…disastrous,” he explains.

“I don’t understand.”

“When I found your soul, I touched it with my grace, only just, and it pulled me in. I was powerless to stop it. Not that I meant to stop it. It was necessary to draw you out,” he explains. “You experienced something similar when you reached for me.”

“So, we can share space but we can’t touch each other?” Adam guesses.

“We can, but we need to be careful. I will need to maintain a certain level of mental distance.”

“That doesn’t sound terrible, right?” Adam asks, then frowns. “Is it going to hurt you?”

Michael smiles. “No, I don’t think it will hurt me.” Not in the way Adam thinks, at least. Michael will miss this connection like a severed limb now having experienced it himself, however briefly. He tells himself it is his cross to bear, part of his duty to see them through this ordeal.

“It might feel jarring, at first, when I erect the first barrier,” he warns. “When you’re ready.”

Adam eyes him for long moments, stepping forward hesitantly into Michael’s space. Slowly, as if unsure of his welcome, he winds his arms around Michael’s neck. “Ready when you are, I guess.”

Michael’s eyes close and his arms raise of their own accord, dormant muscle memory. Is Adam naturally prone to physical affection or did he divine this need from Michael’s own deprivation? Or is it simply that he is brave enough to take what is offered when Michael himself cannot bring himself to ask? This human gives of himself so freely, even after all his soul has endured, and how did Michael not see him? How did he not recognize the value of this soul, the clever merit of the mind and spirit it contains?

Michael embraces Adam with a reverence that borders on bliss, allows himself to fully experience the emotion rising within himself until he recognizes the longing for what it is and, slowly, he begins the process. Because he must. Because Adam is relying on him to keep him safe, and Michael has already taken so much.

When they part, they are still physically embracing, but the ghost of Adam’s feelings is once again contained; to each, their privacy restored. Already, Michael misses those bright, human flares of expression. It is true that angels have the capacity for deep emotion, but where angels smolder for eons, humans burn with intensity.

Adam leans back, his arms draped over Michael’s shoulders as he squints, lips pulled up slightly into a grimace. “Yeah, that feels…not great.”

Secretly, Michael concurs. “It will pass,” he says aloud, then presses his palm to Adam’s forehead and speeds the process anyway. He takes a moment to repair the bruised edges of his soul while he is at it, gratified to see Adam’s visage reflect his improved condition.

“Thanks.” Adam regards him curiously, stepping away so that they are no longer touching, and oh, how Michael wishes he would stay. Adam draws in a long breath. “So…you and me for all eternity, huh?”

Michael quirks a brow. “It appears that way.”

“So…what do we do now?”

Michael snaps his fingers and the ground shifts beneath them until all at once it stops and they are standing at the very top of the Great Pyramid of Giza. Adam teeters, his human perception unable to tell the difference between Michael’s illusion and reality, so he reaches out to steady him. “I always liked Egypt.”

“Holy shit!” Adam chuckles, an airy hysterical thing. “Is this Giza?”

“At one time.” He gestures to the people milling about below. “This is not long after the completion of the Great Pyramid.”

Adam gapes at him, astounded. “What…how?”

“It’s only a memory.”

“Uh, yeah, well. This is some next level lucid daydreaming, Michael!” Adam whistles. “Holy cow.”

Michael points below. “There is Hemon, the architect.”

“Jesus…”

“Not yet,” Michael teases. “Not for another…two thousand years, at least.”

“Were you there?”

“Of course.” Michael smiles at the memory. “All of my brothers were, aside from Lucifer.”

“So…how far back does your memory go?” Adam asks, clearly excited by the possibilities yet almost certainly afraid to ask.

He quirks a brow. “To the very first moment of my creation.”

Adam blinks. “And, uh…what was that like?”

Michael raises his hand and snaps his fingers. Stone and soil and people blur and shift as Michael rewinds the sands of time within his mind. When they stop, Michael catches Adam just before his knees buckle and fail.

“This is not quite the beginning,” he tells him. “This is day four.”

“Day…” Adam swallows, eyes darting along the vast emptiness of space, its stars and meteors, then finally to the dusty floor of the moon itself. “Day four? Like, day _four,_ day four? The fourth day of…”

“Creation, yes.”

“I’m on…I’m on the moon.”

“Yes.”

“I’m on the moon.” Adam laughs, giddy. “We’re on the fucking moon! Ah, man. Eat your heart out, Sinatra!”

Michael frowns. “Sinatra?”

“Frank Sinatra. Nineteen fifty-five?” Adam gestures wildly with his hands. “You know, king of show tunes?”

Michael regards him blankly. Adam rolls his eyes and does something completely unexpected: He sings. The first and only human soul to ever do so, Michael is certain, Adam sings a show tune. In hell.

“Fly me to the moon,” the human croons, somewhat off key, though Michael is no less charmed for it. “Let me play among the stars.”

The song gains accompaniment by a dance, Adam snapping his fingers and walking sideways along the moon’s surface. It is utterly ridiculous. “Let me see what spring is like, on a, Jupiter and Mars. In other words—” he juts a hand out toward Michael. “Hold my hand!”

Adam wiggles his fingers, eyes bright and dancing with mirth, and Michael. Michael does something he hasn’t done in years, least of all imagined himself capable of doing in hell.

Michael laughs.


End file.
